Increase Targeted Organic Traffic to Your Website with SEO

What is the best way to increase traffic to your website?

Article by Colette Nichol, Story Strategist, SEO Expert, and Solo Filmmaker

SEO is the best way to increase organic traffic to your website. If you want consistent traffic that leads to sales or other conversions, SEO is a very good option. It has the highest ROI. It’s consistent and scalable, and it’s still possible to break into any niche with SEO i.e. it’s an attainable way to drive traffic.

No matter what niche you’re in, there will always be tons of highly specific keywords that you can use to drive relevant traffic to your website.

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Table of Contents

1. Alternatives to SEO
2. How To Create An SEO Strategy That Will Drive Traffic For Years
3. 25 Ways to Help Rank Your Website on the First Page of Google
4. Increase Website Traffic For Free?
5. What’s The Cheapest Way To Drive Traffic To A Website?
6. Common Questions About Increasing Traffic To A Website
7. Work with an SEO Expert

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Alternatives to SEO that Also Drive Traffic

There are plenty of other ways to drive traffic to your website.

I’ve used email marketing and Facebook ads to drive website traffic. But I’ve found organic SEO to be the most reliable and have the highest ROI. Ads are great if you have the time to get hyper-specific about your audience, follow the data, and refine your message until it’s perfect.

But Google and YouTube are the two main places where your people actively search for content and products. So if you’re not using either of these options, you’re leaving many of your audience behind.

Alternatives to SEO:

• Advertising on Social and YouTube
• Advertising with Google Ads
• Creating a Facebook Group on a Hot Niche Topic
• TikTok
• Instagram & Facebook
• YouTube Channel
• Email marketing

How to Create an SEO Strategy that Will Drive Traffic for Years

When you base your SEO strategy on creating content miles ahead of your competition, you make it difficult for others to knock you out of the top spot in your niche.

Many people think SEO is all about hacks that can give you quick but fleeting wins. That might have been the case years ago. But not anymore.

Google’s latest algorithm update is all about “helpfulness.”

In other words, if your content isn’t genuinely helpful, you’re not going to get to the top of Google’s search results unless the competition is low. When creating an SEO strategy that will drive traffic for years and doesn’t need to be constantly fiddled with, you need to focus on quality content.

These are the steps you should follow to create content that will get you to page one of Google:

1. Start by discovering the most important keywords for your website, i.e. the main searches that will lead to sales.
2. Optimize your home page for your most important money keywords.
3. Create a pillar page content plan that gives your website niche authority in the eyes of Google.
4. Create your content and interlink it properly. Ensure your content is better than the competition.
5. Track your content, and update it annually.
6. Consider adding strategic videos (optimized according to video SEO best practices) to your most important pages to increase authority and rise to the top of the search results.

Traffic-Driving SEO & Copywriting Tactics that Work

25 Tactics and Tips That’ll Help You Rank Your Website on the First Page of Google

1. Write SEO site titles that contain your keywords. The site title is what shows up on the Google search results. It’s different from the post or page title. You can customize this site title in WordPress and all other website-building platforms.
2. Write meta descriptions that contain your keywords. This description shows up under the search results titles in Google. It helps Google know whether your pages are relevant.
3. Include your keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 titles on your pages and posts.
4. Not sure how to do keyword research? Learn about keyword research in this post here >>
5. But don’t stuff your pages with keywords unnaturally.
6. Write like a human, not a keyword-stuffing robot! That means being helpful and creative.
7. Look at the competition’s word count and do 10-20% more than them.
8. Focus on the keywords that will drive revenue. You can see what people are paying to advertise on top keywords in your niche using Ubersuggest or Semrush.
9. Write clickable headlines without writing clickbait. Your headline should preview the topic and have some element of curiosity.
10. Create visual media that complement your written post. You might start ranking on Google images, which can drive a surprising amount of traffic depending on the niche.
11. Create videos for your posts and pages to increase users’ time on page and move up in the search results.
12. Make sure you have topic hubs that link together.
13. Make sure you link from your home page to your most important money pages.
14. Don’t go after super high competition keywords when you’re first starting out unless there is a bigger-picture strategy behind doing so.
15. Focus more on content than backlinks. Getting people to link to a website with crappy content isn’t help you win in the long run.
16. Increase the speed of your website pages and posts. Crush images using Squoosh.app or another method to keep your pages fast.
17. If your site is extremely slow, consider using a better website host or hiring a pro to speed up your site.
18. Don’t overdo it with pop-ups. This can drop your ranking.
19. Use schema markup if relevant. This tells Google that your post contains certain relevant elements like reviews, recipes, videos, products, and events.
20. If you have time-focused content, i.e. it contains dates and info that changes over time, update it yearly.
21. Refresh old posts by answering common questions that people ask online.
22. Use HARO to build your online authority. Alternatively, you can do high-quality guest blogging or appear on podcasts or other forms of media. Having more online authority does help your website rank.
23. Ensure that anyone who writes a blog post for your site is an authority on the topic and include their authority markers in the author bio. Link out to a bio page for the author on every post.
24. Use bold text and imagery to create variation in your posts and hold the reader’s attention.
25. Make sure your posts and pages are easy to read. 
26. Make sure your pages and posts are compelling and helpful. The longer people stay on your pages, the more your pages rise in the SERPs.
27. If you’re doing a long-form post, always include a table of contents. 
28. If you’re a local business, focus on creating relevant local pages, as those are currently the easiest to rank for.

Increase Website Traffic for Free

Since time is money when it comes to business, you cannot increase your website traffic for free.

Every single method of increasing website traffic takes time. Whether or not it’s your time is another question. If you have more time than money, I suggest learning one or two main ways to drive traffic and executing a solid plan.

If you’ll be doing it yourself, choose two ways you’ll enjoy.

Or, if you just like quick wins, choose the ways you think will be easy and provide the best results. But again, if you can’t stand doing it, you won’t stick with it long enough to get results. While TikTok is one of the most common ways new entrepreneurs are driving traffic right now, if you don’t like doing TikTok-style videos, then there’s no sense in tackling this method.

Meanwhile, if you hate writing and don’t want to learn how to outsource, then SEO is a bad option.

Choose something you can keep doing for 12-24 months at a minimum.

⭐ Read the Related Post: What is an SEO Consultant?

What’s the Cheapest Way to Drive Traffic to a Website?

While you might think you want the cheapest way to drive traffic, you probably just want the way that will drive the most revenue.

Thus, you should be more interested in getting the best ROI than finding the cheapest method. If it’s cheap but doesn’t work, it’s pointless. So what’s the highest ROI way to drive traffic to a website? SEO. While email marketing has the highest ROI of all marketing methods, if you don’t already have a big email list, then you have no way of doing email marketing to drive traffic to your products and services. And buying an email list does not work in 2022.

According to WebsiteBuilderExpert.com, “SEO marketing has an average ROI ratio of 22:1, equating to 2,200 percent.”

I’ve gotten even better results in my SEO client work. However, anywhere from 10:1 to 30:1 is incredible ROI, particularly compared to the ROI you often see on ads.

Common Questions about Increasing Traffic to a Website

What are 5 ways to improve website traffic?

While there are more than five ways to improve website traffic, the top five ways are SEO, organic TikTok, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and Google ads.

Things change quickly online, but SEO has continued to be one of the best ways to improve website traffic and turn that traffic into sales.

When you use SEO, you’re directing people who are actually interested in what you’re selling or doing to your site.

Whereas when you do advertising, you’re interrupting people who might not be interested in what you offer. That’s typically why ads have a lower ROI than SEO.

How do I increase traffic to my website?

To increase your website’s traffic, you must choose a traffic-driving strategy and stick with it for at least 12 months.

Learn how to make that strategy plug-and-play. While I recommend SEO because the results you get will last the longest and it has the highest ROI, you might prefer to run ads.

🌟Related Post: These Affordable SEO Services for Small Businesses Provide Great ROI

How can I increase my website traffic without SEO?

You can increase your website traffic without SEO by using organic social media marketing.

Right now, TikTok is probably the fastest way for you to grow an audience and start driving traffic. But you also need to identify where your target market is hanging out and start from there. If your people aren’t on TikTok, then it’s not a good strategy. So first identify where your ideal audience hangs out, then choose a platform to develop.

Make sure you get people onto an email list once they hit your website otherwise, your traffic efforts are getting wasted.

Why is my website traffic not increasing?

If your website traffic isn’t increasing, it could be that you haven’t been doing a strategy for long enough, or you’re not doing it correctly.

No matter what strategy you’re using, there are best practices. Review the best practices for your particular strategy. If you’re still unsure what you’re doing wrong, find an expert or consultant and hire them to review your process. Or join a course that has an online community where you can ask questions.

More SEO Articles and Guides

If you’re considering doing SEO, these articles and guides will help you decide whether to move forward with expert help or DIY.

• Quick Guide to SEO Marketing for Small Businesses
• Is SEO Worth It, or Is It a Scam?
• Foolproof YouTube SEO Tips to Boost Your Video Rankings and Business Growth

SEO Consultant

If you’re a business owner and want to work with an SEO consultant and expert, please schedule a 15-minute call with me.

The link to schedule the call is below. I work with local and global businesses that are in a growth cycle and want to increase their traffic. If you’re already spending money on advertising, but you’re not maximizing your online strategy with SEO, then you’re missing out on a major source of revenue.

There’s no better traffic than the people who are already looking to have their problems solved.

In most cases, SEO traffic beats all other forms of traffic and tends to have the highest ROI of all forms of online marketing.

SEO Vancouver

Hi, I’m Colette Nichol! I’m a Vancouver SEO.

Whether you’re based in Vancouver or the middle of the Arctic circle, I can help you get found online. Typically, I work with clients who have growing businesses and want to add SEO into the mix. If you are open to combining high-end evergreen videos with traditional on-page SEO and a content strategy, you can expect to see massive results. I’d love to hear about your business goals to see if working together might be a fit.

Get in touch HERE to schedule a 15-minute introductory call.